Courses for Engagements with the Common Good

Spring 2015

HECG 100 A/B- Reacting to the Past, Engaging the Present: Justice in Practice

ECG 100 is the first in a series of courses that students take each year they are at Cabrini College. This writing-intensive course approaches the Common Good from a variety of perspectives by exposing and interrogating the tension between the individual and society.

It also examines the individual’s position in various communities: family, nation, race, class, gender, and other categories of identity.

Often, the relationship between individuals and others is thought of as competitive. This course complicates that understanding by exploring relationships that work towards greater dignity, solidarity, and equality.

This course makes students increasingly prepared to see solidarity, reciprocity, and mutual engagement as social justice.

Through reading, writing, classroom discussion, and co-curricular activities, students will come to a greater understanding of the formal and informal social structures that help construct their identities. A key method of instruction used in this course is something called “Reacting to the Past.”

This is a teaching strategy developed originally at Barnard College and now used in college classrooms across the country.

More will be said about 2 this method and expectations for students; you will find an introduction to “Reacting” included with this syllabus. In short, “Reacting to the Past” calls on students to play out the parts of historical actors in key moments of cultural and political crisis; students must in essence “inhabit” their roles, getting into the minds and hearts of those historical figures they portray

Students will examine the term “justice” as it exists in our interconnected hemisphere with a special focus on issues of migration and human rights as they pertain to the qualities of power, privilege, difference, and how they affect dignity, equality and solidarity.

Through readings, videos and class discussions, and through an active collaboration with our community partner, the Norristown Area School District (NASD), students will examine the common good from a variety of perspectives by exposing and interrogating the tension between the individual and society.

Students will examine the individual’s position in various communities: family nation, race, class, gender, and other categories of identity and will observe and understand the challenges facing many Latino families at different times of their journeys as they begin a new life in the United States and their personal experiences.

The course content (texts, class discussions, in-class discussion with Cabrini Latino community members and Cabrini Senior Mentors, and active mentoring of Latino high school students guided by these experienced senior mentors) will provide a context through which students understand and feel ways we are connected politically, socially, economically, and culturally with our hemispheric neighbors and the local Latino community. Students will have the opportunity to compare their lives with those of their Latino counterparts.

In this seminar, students will have the opportunity to reflect upon their own viewpoints - understanding not only where we come from and who we are, but also of what we can become, as we reach out to others. At the heart of this course, then, stands the notion of transformation of ourselves and others.

ECG 100 B - Coming to America

In the spirit of Mother Cabrini, patron saint of immigrants, this writing intensive course explores the struggles of American immigrants and investigates how the influx of new cultures, languages and backgrounds impact our future together.

This course is designed to offer opportunities to engage with various resources in a quest for the understanding of immigration through various viewpoints.

Students will study history, current events and relevant laws pertaining to immigration. Through this coursework students will write critical essays, participate in co-curricular activities, and engage in constructive conversation on immigration and what it means to be an “American.”

Students will have an opportunity to meet and hear from immigrants on why they made the choice to leave their homes and journey to the United States.

The first half of the course will focus on the history of immigration in the United States, with each class period focusing on different immigrant groups, including discussion of reasons for immigration, employment, settlement patterns, ethnicity and integration, and particular challenges faced.

The second half of the course will focus on current policy and social issues relating to immigration.

ECG 100 D - English With an Accent

America has always been a nation characterized by ethnic and linguistic diversity. Our First Amendment clearly established “Freedom of religion, speech, and the press…”

Americans are a representation of the world, and the history of our country has been to affirm that diversity through these constitutional rights. Our diversity is one of our nation’s greatest gifts and assets.

However, due to the communities that we live in and the activities that we pursue on a daily basis, many of us are not aware of the incredible diversity that surrounds us. One of the purposes of this class is to learn about the widespread diversity of our nation, its importance to our culture, and the ways in which we can encourage open-minded thinking when dealing with people of other nations, races, cultures, beliefs, and languages.

This course is designed to help you become a more curious individual, one who actively interrogates private assumptions to learn more about your place in--and responsibilities to--the world. In addition to developing your understanding of issues of social justice, this course aims to improve your proficiency as college-level writers.

ECG 100 G - Fall Out IV

This course will provide students with frameworks for exploring self, other, and how to make sense of or “negotiate” diverse worlds. While playing off of the hugely popular Fallout video game series, this course uses Marshall Ganz’s Dialogue model, Catholic Social Teaching, and theoretical frameworks to analyze dystopic texts.

Ideas of self-identity and self-understanding will be approached through the critical lens of Gloria Anzaldúa’s chapter “La Conciencia de la Mestiza,” which serve as both content and explanatory models for examining ideas of ‘self’ and ‘other.’

By building on dialogue models students will develop in self-understanding; identify and interrogate their views of their places in various societies and communities; and explore their role as engage citizens of various polities

ECG 100 LC - Our Interdependent World

To educate students to become “Engaged citizens of the world” is one of the goals of Cabrini College, as stated in the College Mission Statement.

That is exactly what the goal of this course is. In this course you will explore global issues and international dimensions of social justice. You will learn and practice ways to become engaged in these issues, now an in the future.

As a result, you will become a more knowledgeable citizen and engaged leader in our interdependent world.

Some of the benefits you will gain from this course are: global understanding; analytic skills; ethical and moral principles; leadership development; problem-solving skill; managing and leading change; team-building; communication and personal skills.

ECG 100 LC2 - Foster Youth in America

This writing-intensive course approaches the Common Good from a variety of perspectives by exposing and interrogating the tension between the individual and society. It also examines the individual’s position in various communities: family, nation, race, class, gender, and other categories of identity.

Often, the relationship between individuals and others is thought of as competitive. This course complicates that understanding by exploring relationships that work towards greater dignity, solidarity, and equality.

This course makes students increasingly prepared to see solidarity, reciprocity, and mutual engagement as social justice. Through reading, writing, classroom discussion, and co-curricular activities, students will come to a greater understanding of the formal and informal social structures that help construct their identities.

ECG 100 LC3 - Civil Rights & Social Justice

Throughout the semester, this course focuses on issues related to civic literacy, civil rights, and social justice in the United States. Students will engage in close readings of the United States' founding documents in order to understand how beliefs concerning civil liberties and civil rights evolved from 1776 to the present day.

Through those close reading exercises and other activities, students will have opportunities to hone their critical thinking and writing skills and to deepen their civic literacy. At the heart of the course is a Reacting to the Past module on the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.

By assuming the roles of people who participated in the Civil Rights Movement, students will gain an appreciation of the ways that different people developed their own views of social justice and aspired to realize their dreams.

Students can then use those real-life examples to establish their own dreams, reflect upon their own social justice beliefs, and start their journey toward becoming engaged citizens of the United States and of the world.

ECG 100 LC4 - Words in Action

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

Anthropologist Margaret Mead’s powerful assertion about how change happens remains a vibrant touchstone for anyone interested in how to understand others and our roles in the various communities to which we belong or in which we participate.

To explore such significant matters—the very purpose of life—we reflect in this ECG seminar upon our own worldviews—our understanding not only of where we come from and who we are, but also of what we can become.

At the heart of this course, then, stands the notion of transformation: of ourselves and others. More specifically, by using the lens of inter-faith or inter-religious dialogue and community action, we explore how our own lives converge with social justice—especially on Cabrini’s own campus.

We begin with what’s familiar to us by reflecting upon the assumptions and notions of ‘self’ and ‘belonging’ we hold most dear, but then move outward to investigate others’ worldviews and experiences of belief; at every step we will use the notion of deliberative dialogue—of words in action, of words as action—as our catalyst for understanding in what ways community matters.

ECG 100 LC5/ LC6 - Reacting to the Past

ECG 100 is the first in a series of courses that students take each year they are at Cabrini College. This writing-intensive course approaches the Common Good from a variety of perspectives by exposing and interrogating the tension between the individual and society.

It also examines the individual’s position in various communities: family, nation, race, class, gender, and other categories of identity. Often, the relationship between individuals and others is thought of as competitive.

This course complicates that understanding by exploring relationships that work towards greater dignity, solidarity, and equality. This course makes students increasingly prepared to see solidarity, reciprocity, and mutual engagement as social justice. Through reading, writing, classroom discussion, and co-curricular activities, students will come to a greater understanding of the formal and informal social structures that help construct their identities.

The central focus of this course will be the “Reacting to the Past” curriculum. “‘Reacting to the Past’ consists of elaborate games, set in the past, in which students are assigned roles with “victory objectives” informed by classic texts in the history of ideas.

Class sessions are run entirely by students; instructors advise and guide students and grade their oral and written work.

ECG 100 LLC - Growing Old Together

What is the aging experience? How is it the same and different across cultures and times?

What is its meaning – what does it mean to a culture, to a society, to you as an individual who will probably become aged?

How are you involved with the elderly? Are they part of your immediate family and day-to-day living; do they live in retirement or nursing homes removed from contact with you; do they have differing images governed by the traditions and mores of various cultures or various time periods in those cultures?

This course is designed to offer opportunities to understand aging from multiple perspectives. You will study attitudes, opinions, and knowledge about aging and old age among different races, nationalities, religions and cultures.

You will learn of some of the successes and deficiencies in eldercare in the U.S. and other cultures. You will study how society’s media portray the elderly and aging. Through this course you will also meet elderly people and experience first hand some of their life experiences.

ECG 200

ECG 200 A - Democracy & Diversity

Democracy and Diversity is a course in which we will be concerned with the problems that countries, and in particular democracies, have in making one country out of diverse social, ethnic, cultural, economic, and religious groups.

Here in the United States, that has been an especially interesting problem since most Americans are immigrants or are descended from immigrants and these immigrants were not all alike!

The United States has been amazingly successful at creating a democratic society from such diversity when compared to other countries like Iraq, for instance. But there are many tensions and even injustices in the United States that have their origin in the differences between various parts of the larger population.

Making one out of many, or as it says on the penny, "e pluribus Unum," is a continuous process that we in the United States have done with deliberateness and with difficulty at times.

ECG 200 B & C- Hunger at your Finger Tips

Students will learn about food insecurity, solidarity, sustainability, and hunger with a focus in participating with community activities that are solving the problem of hunger in America and globally.

Class learning will enable students to mesh their own belief systems with those that are reflected by hunger relief and food security policy organizations and governments.

Students should plan on 2-3 full-day field trips to local hunger relief organizations, food manufacturers or local farms that are engaged in sustainable food system practices.

Field experience, participating with other social justice groups, and writing are emphasized. Students will be required to participate in volunteer sessions at a local soup kitchen multiple times during the semester.

ECG 300

ECG 300 A - Hands-On Justice

It will use multi-media presentations in most lectures. It will make each one of us to touch and reflect deeply about who we are; our pains and our hopes.

It will enable us to analyze and critique few of the glaring injustices in the world today, such as Global (including domestic) Oppression against Women, Personal and Corporate Greed, and/or Slavery of Resident Illegal Aliens. It will enable us to move beyond the paralysis of anger and despair to concrete action.

It will enable us to use logic of coolest mind with warmest heart towards justicemaking.

This class is for those students who want to be real. This class is for those students who want to make a difference in the world today. This class is for those students who strive to live their lives to the fullest!

ECG 300 B/I - Northern Ireland: Post Conflict

This course will focus on the evolution of Ireland from the early 1900s to the present day. It will look at British influence as it relates to the formation of the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.

This course will also focus on the socio-cultural problems that exist between Catholics and Protestants in the North due to the separation and look at the peace process and the path forward as it relates to restorative justice.

ECG 300 C - The Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program The War On Drugs: An Examination of Drug Use & Policy

This course explores the effects of a policy which deeply impacts nations, our country, our neighborhoods and ourselves.

We will examine the historical, political, and the psychosocial effects of a confluence of drug-related policies that has come to be known as The War on Drugs. Interview with and permisson of Instructors to enroll.

ECG 300 D/G - Dating and Domestic Violence

Students in this course will learn about Dating and Domestic Violence while becoming provisionally certified by Laurel House and the PCADV as a crisis counselor.

At the same time, students will conduct research in local communities to assist efforts to eradicate domestic violence through education and prevention.

Cabrini College is a Catholic, liberal-arts college dedicated to academic excellence, leadership development, and a commitment to social justice.